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1995–2001
| glossary | sounds | numbers | nouns | adjuncts | pronouns |
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| verbs | phrases | syntax | coinages | examples | lexicon |
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Justin B Rye
1995–2001
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wishes(such as
long may he reign) are recognisable by the fact that the verb doesn't take normal pronoun suffixes – instead it takes one of the following alternative set of
optativesuffixes:
| First-Exclusive | ·u ! | let me/us (but not you) |
| First-Inclusive | ·um ! | let's (all) |
| Second-Familiar | · ! | go on, do it!(plain command) |
| Second-Polite | ·ut ! | please… |
| Third-Neuter | ·u ! | let it, may they |
| Third-Epicene | ·u ! | let him/her/them |
let it begin!; ¡ ji on·tharko·u !
(long) may the king live!; ¡ pa sifulu·o !
let me die (if I am lying)!(note the use of ·o ! rather than ·u ! when the verbal stem itself ends in u).
speak!, desen
he/she/they spoke. This rarely leads to any ambiguity since commands are also identifiable by tone of voice, or by redundant formalities like the use of subjunctives and explicit pronouns: ¡ jejale na desen·ukh !
please speak.
Yes/Noand
Wh.
| Statement: | ji e niamo | the king ate something |
| Y/N Question: | ¿ ji e niamo ? | did the king eat something? |
| Wh-Question: | ¿ fe ji niamo ? | what did the king eat? |
| Wh-Question: | ¿ nuf e niamo ? | where did he eat something? |
Yes/Noquestions are formed in English by moving a verb to the start (
There are./
Are there?), often using an added verb
do(
It rained./
Did it rain?). That kind of complicated reshuffling is not needed to form simple questions in this language – the intonation pattern (or punctuation) is enough.
Wh-questions(with a
who?or
where?or similar question-word) are a little more familiar, since they may involve bringing the question-word (fe, nuf, or whatever) to the beginning of the sentence. Note that these preposed words are not the same as the relative-words (e, nui etc) used to translate
what,
whereetc in relative clauses (see IXc).
don't speak!, and ¿ ji e me·niamo ?
didn't the king eat something?.
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Intransitivesare verbs with no
objectnoun (see cases, IVb). If the subject of the sentence is expressed only by agreement on the verb rather than an explicit noun (see VIc) this can mean grammatical sentences as short as pe
he/she walked.
Transitivesare verbs with an
objectnoun; they may have a whole string of subject, object, and oblique-case nouns (normally in that order) as in ji e deat·on thun·es niamo
the king ate something beside the river(literally
king something river beside eat). On the other hand they may have only the object: e niamo
he ate something.
English transitive verbs often have the option of throwing out
their object, and expressing more or less the same idea
intransitively – he ate
. But the verb
niamo isn't free to do that – it's always
transitive. To help you keep things straight, verbs are
labelled in the lexicon as T(ransitive)
or I(ntransitive)
, not merely as V(erb)
s.
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The verb be
and a few others like it such as seem
are linking verbs (marked with an L
in the
lexicon). They form descriptive or
equative sentences (X is Y
or X is a Y
), which may
look like transitive sentences in English but behave quite
differently from the ones described in the previous
section. The verb in such a sentence comes in the middle
rather than at the end, and the Y
position is marked as a
subject rather than an object (cf. posh English it is I
rather than colloquial it's me
).
Be
(or am/are/is/was/were
) usually translates as
either re or khoi (depending on Aspect –
VIIc):
the ground is wet(is currently)
water is wet(is always)
These sentences have a nice, familiar, English-like
structure. However, the subject can be omitted where it's
clear what's being described, and the verb be
itself can
be left out when convenient:
he is the king
(he) is strong
The convention of writing a swung dash where a linking verb has
been dropped is purely a punctuation trick (borrowed from
Russian), not reflected in the spoken language; ji ∼
tánne the king's a father
sounds just like
ji tánne the king's father
. To avoid
confusion, the former would usually be ji re
tánne. For neuter nouns, on the other hand, no
explicit verb is needed to distinguish kéntha ∼
lefichi the horse is a shadow
from kéntha
lefichi·es the horse's shadow
.
English also uses be
for exist
, but that translates
as an entirely separate verb, on·tur·uk (a
normal intransitive verb with verb-final word-order):
there are no doors
therefore I am
Without the on· (imperfective) prefix, tur is used for pointing out things that weren't previously apparent:
there's a fish!
here he is!
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Reflexive verbs are particularly common in this language, taking
the place of many verbs which English makes passive or just
intransitive: for instance while arnu·s means it
burned (something)
, the equivalent of English it burned
(away)
is arnu·s·or, literally it
burned itself
. Verbs that behave like this are marked out
in the lexicon by being labelled not as
T(ransitive)
but R(eflexivising)
.
Verbs are made reflexive by adding not a special pronoun (like
English myself
, themselves
etc) but an invariable
suffix ·(o)r, whose meaning varies to match the
subject:
I didn't kill myself
kill yourself!
he is killing himself
to kill oneself
No separate object pronoun is needed to specify who it's being
done to; indeed, adding an object to the clause changes the sense
of the reflexive ending from oneself
to one
another
, each other
:
the dogs ate one another
please don't kill one another!
The verb akhe·r (apparently the reflexive of
become
, although by the regular rules that shouldn't have a
reflexive!) is used to construct unambiguously passive
sentences. The verb to be passivised becomes an infinitive
(VIId) with the main verb position taken
by akhe·r, and by
translates as the
postposition ie:
the king was eaten
please don't get killed!
he was eaten by dogs
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